1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an application execution system for running a software application over a communication network such as a LAN or the Internet, to an application execution device, and to a control method and program for the application execution system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network systems that use a server to provide an application execution service to terminals connected to the Internet are known from the literature. With the network system taught in Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. JP-A-2003-186380, for example, the user accesses a server over the Internet from a local client terminal to run the application stored on the server and get the output data resulting from running the program.
Network systems of this type are available from different vendors, and individual users select and use the needed services. A problem with such network systems is that communication can be interrupted and a sufficiently fast response cannot be achieved when the Internet connection is unstable. Another problem is that when the server goes down or the connection is interrupted, the user cannot access the service until the system recovers. One solution for this problem is to install an application server for executing programs on the user LAN so that the client terminal accesses the application from a local server instead of accessing the server over the Internet. This arrangement enables the client terminal to get the result of executing the program by accessing the application server connected to the LAN, and eliminates the need to access the server over the Internet.
Even if the client terminal accesses a local application server, however, the client terminal cannot get the result of executing the application from the application server if there is a problem with the application running on the application server. The client terminal can get the result of executing the application by accessing the server that provides the application from the client terminal in this case, but the application must be quit and the access settings must be changed every time the application crashes, and this complicates operation.